We'd Better Dream
by singsongsung
Summary: Season one. Peter/Claire. What was, what wasn't, and what should have been. "Save the cheerleader; save the world."


**A/N: **First Heroes fic! I'm addicted. Yes, it's an incestuous relationship, but they were just _written_ in a way that was _meant_ to be shipped. Feedback is love.

**We'd Better Dream**

**(if we have to struggle)**

_Save the cheerleader; save the world._

Those are his directions. Save a cheerleader, and apparently that will save it all. Save one inconsequential, peppy girl who ran into a fire and somehow survived, and save all humanity. This is goodness, this is heroic, this is _right_. She is an ambiguous goal in his future, a girl too young to mean anything to him personally: he is detached, and that's how it should be.

It's a task, a goal, one that he feels compelled to complete and achieve.

_Save the cheerleader; save the world_.

-

The first time he sees her she is nothing. Or at least, she is _meant_ to be nothing. She is blonde hair brushing pink cheeks and green eyes glittering up at him, she is a wry thread in the sweetness of the words that her glossy lips form, duffel bag bouncing against her hip. She is a temporary distraction, pulling his eyes away from the photograph he's studying and the lies he's telling (_I'm alumni_), a person passing through his world.

But there is a pulse, when their eyes lock, a kind of recognition, something within her that he has recently discovered in himself. He feels like he's looking into the past and the future all at once. He feels _attachment_, the kind an ex-hospice nurse and less-loved child has never quite experienced before. When she turns to go, one last sparkle darting through her eyes, he reaches out to her.

_It gets better. Life after high school; it gets a lot better. _

She blinks at him, lips curling upward in the prettiest smile he has ever seen, green-glass eyes reflecting his enthrallment back to him. Smile still evident in her body language, she walks away, down the hall, and his eyes dance over her curly hair, settling on her hips.

-

It's her. It's _her_.

It's her, stumbling up the steps, tripping and cowering, her arms and her hands reaching for his; it's her voice that demands _what about you?_ and something that sounds like it might break at the back of her throat, something that looks like fracture in her eyes for that one moment she hesitates before he yells and she finds it in herself to go. For that instant she looks torn apart, but he will soon learn that she cannot be broken.

She is there, bones snapping into place with ease and cuts disappearing from her skin, the red of the blood on her cheeks and in her hair clashing violently with the shade of the red of her uniform. It's her presence that lets him live, she saves him back without even knowing it, knees soaked in blood as she sits next to him.

Looking at him in breathless wonderment, she watches the miraculous mending of all his wounds, and he can feel it between them, threads tying them together, the way she's aching to forge a connection with him, words on the tip of her tongue, heart pounding against her ribcage in an effort to spring out of her chest.

Tears mingle with blood on her cheeks as police sirens get louder and louder, and he's struck by this sudden, innate need to _protect_ her.

(_Save the cheerleader; save the world_.)

He wants to wrap her up in a hug and whisper into her hair – which he knows, just knows, under the metallic scent of blood, would smell like shampoo that comes in pink bottles and is named after some tropical flower – to save her in all the ways he himself feels like he needs to be saved, to kiss her bloody iron, sorrow salty lips, to connect them physically and confirm their understanding of one another.

Her name is _Claire_, said with a wry twist of those lips he can't stop looking at, a dimple in one cheek. She leans closer hesitantly as they introduce themselves and she breathlessly tries to tell him that they're the _same, _that he can do what she can do. Listening without truly focusing or understanding, he shifts slightly, letting himself reciprocate the movement, until they are at a point where they are breathing the same air, exhales colliding in a burst of mist between them in the night air.

For someone indestructible, he is struck by how incredibly delicate she appears to him in that moment, when the sirens fade away and they're bonded by similar experiences, and he things that unsteady balance she holds between repairing and shattering is enthralling. She is _beautiful_, and he wants to say it, breathe it out into that communal air that houses their shared secrets like another hidden truth that only they will ever be able to comprehend, a gift and a burden all at once.

But then the sirens penetrate the buzz-like quiet that has existed so far, and he hears a panicked voice calling out to her and he's hurrying her away and forcing himself to ignore the last look she casts his way. Suddenly there are police and handcuffs and he should be worrying about himself, but he can't help but seek her out.

A wave of nausea hits him for a moment when he finds her through the chaos around him. She is half-walking, half-running toward a man in her high school cheerleading uniform, falling into him and burying her face in his chest like a scared little girl. And _still_, Peter is noticing her legs beneath that short skirt and the hair tumbling onto her shoulders and wishing that he'd been the one she'd chosen to cling to.

He's an adult. He's some kind of strange superhero. And she, she can heal herself, but she's…she's _jailbait_. Whatever he's thinking, or feeling, it's _wrong_.

And yet, it would seem that he's done something right.

_Save the cheerleader; save the world_.

-

He is in a jail cell when he sees her again, his head sore and still spinning, his skin still bloody in its appearance. She looks young (_jailbait_, he thinks wryly), very girl-next-door, earnest eyes but secretive smile as she sends her father out and perches on his bed.

Still beautiful, still unsure, still strengthening the connection that he has tried to forget they have.

She is the high school cheerleader, but he is the one stumbling on words and ideas and only managing to come up with something that lands somewhere between the realms of sincere and cheesy.

_I knew I had to save you_.

The smile she responds with passes by any school-girl qualities, so bright he's sure it's strength could compete with the light of the sun. She's got dimples in her cheeks again, and for a split second she sounds like the one with the hopeless (_wrong, so wrong_) crush.

There is a shy note in her voice and a pressing together of her lips and something with the potential to evolve into love apparent in her subtle hesitance that he wants to ignore but he finds himself drinking it in instead.

_You're totally my hero_, she says, pausing for a millisecond before she slips away, back to her life, head ducked down.

And his heart could explode, but she has given him the power to regenerate, so it would be useless.

-

He thinks of her sometimes – in passing, that's all.

Sometimes he sees blonde hair on the street and his heart jumps, or he gets a paper cut or a knife slips (an accident, of course) and he will watch as his body repairs itself. He'll think of it, his blood and her blood and this strange gift they now possess; the wonderment, the gratitude in her eyes when she saw that he could do it too, and he regrets the moment she walked out of his life.

She is not unbreakable, he realizes, her face lingering in the back of his mind.

You cannot regenerate the way you felt prior to hurt or loss or grief, you cannot change those emotions, cannot make them disappear so that it seems as if they never existed.

He cannot force himself not to care, cannot erase what he feels for her, can't pretend she never happened.

He begins to wonder if he really saved her after all.

-

Before he can answer that question, she saves his life.

Pulls a piece of glass bravely from his head – not much can scare her anymore – and he bursts back to life in his family home with her at his side. She sparkles with relief and all he can do is breathe and his mother and brother rush to him while he and Claire joke about calling it even and they are both a little breathless over seeing each other again.

But then he notices the palpable tension in the room and is brutally shocked by the sudden similarity he sees between his brother's, and his mother's, and his _own_ eyes when he looks at Claire. It is not a question of colour, but depth: it is similar, too similar, too close to meaning that when their skin, his and Claire's, heals over, it is saving the same blood.

And if he's dizzy it's because he was just dead.

-

A chain of _wrongs_ begins, initiated by Nathan, and Peter can only watch it unravel because when it comes to his relationship with his older brother he has always been best at watching.

Nathan has an illegitimate child.

Nathan has an illegitimate child with blonde wavy hair that bounces on her shoulders and the power to survive anything.

Nathan has an illegitimate child, a girl with green-glass eyes and a pulsing connection to Peter that he can't stop feeling.

Nathan has an illegitimate child and that child is Claire (_wry smile, dimpled cheeks_).

She is a child. And she is Peter's niece. And as a million puzzle pieces fall rightfully into place, he is overpowered by _wrong_.

-

Claire, with her blonde locks and messy emotions and sunshine smile (he saw it for the first time since that time in the jail cell the day she saved his life) does not fit easily into the stoic, dark-featured Petrelli family. She resists the propriety and the brutality and longs for the father who'd do anything to protect her rather than the one who fears she will ruin his public image. And Peter understands, he can relate to those feelings, and he is consumed by that old innate desire to wrap her up in a hug again.

And he almost does, he truly _almost_ does, but then his hands clench into fists as he realizes he's not entirely sure how to hug her as an uncle.

It was always wrong, he reasons with himself, as he sees tears glitter in her eyes that she is too stubborn to allow to fall, as he watches her physical strength stay in tact while her emotions are torn apart.

Except for that one time when it just happened to be right.

_Save the cheerleader; save the world_.

-

He watches as she wanders out of Nathan's office with a heartbroken smile, watches the way her jaw clenches as she observes Nathan's family's return, an injured wife and two little boys that he makes it clear he adores, picture perfect, no room for the daughter he left behind.

Peter catches her eye and she doesn't bother to attempt a smile. He wants to walk toward, wants to reach for her hand, wants to link their hands together and say that he can try to save her again, that he'll stay behind, too.

-

Slowly, and with the help of distance, he teaches himself to be her uncle. He forces himself to focus on bigger things – saving the world, for instance. He tries to configure things so that their relationship is simple and simple, so that it's business and nothing more.

But he knows that she trusts him and relates to him in ways she can't to the rest of his family. He knows she thinks of him as the only one she's connected to, by much more than genealogy. And she will look at him with those hopeful, hurting eyes and he will remember how she asked _what about you? _and her legs in that skirt and lips glossed with blood.

And he will be gone, gone, gone.

Be it wrong or right, his compulsion will forever be to save her.

…_save the world_.

-

He argues with Nathan about her sometimes. Gets in his brother's personal space. He orders Nathan to care, _please_, so that Peter can stop.

As if it could ever be that easy.

-

When he defends her, she looks at him like he's some kind of hero.

-

The day she falls apart, he remembers her innocence and pushes aside every single desire he has ever had to corrupt it.

She sits outside on a be­nch with the sun glinting off her hair and tears streaking her cheeks and gives him the most trusting look he has ever, in his life, received. It strikes him speechless for a moment, but she speaks before he has to.

_…when I met you, I finally felt like I was part of something_.

Her words are thick, shaped around sobs, and she sounds young and desperate but somehow still strong, layered with steel beneath all her pain. There is an undeniable, never-fading strength about her that he finds himself proud of.

Peter just can't help the way he reaches out and touches her cheek tenderly, catching a tear and meeting those eyes that demand he protect her whether he thinks it's a good idea or not.

_It's funny_, he says, trying to be an uncle.

And failing miserably as his voice cracks, too, so slightly he thinks she might not hear it, despite what flickers through her eyes.

_I felt the same thing when I met you_.

-

The day he hands her a gun and tells her that she has to be the one to kill him, her hands shake and her lips quiver even though she holds her chin high.

And it drifts between them like a confession as he locks his eyes on her, that breathy word from the day that feels like it existed a lifetime ago.

_Beautiful_…

Something in her shatters then, he can actually see it break, and he keeps his gaze focused on her until she can heal enough to realize that it is her turn to be the saviour.

_Save the cheerleader…_

-

The night before Peter, and consequently the world, is set for explosion, he is restless.

No one is surprised by his wandering at four a.m. The Petrelli household is chalk full of tension.

He finds Claire on a balcony in silky pyjama shorts and one of his t-shirts, allows himself a moment of invisibility to appreciate the look of the moonlight on her skin and the pretty look of contemplation on her face. He can read the crease on her forehead as rebellion, the curve downward on one side of her lips as regret.

When he lets the invisibility fade away, she's already looking in his direction, smiling (secretively, he thinks).

He says her name, savours it, and then she sits up and sighs.

_You're more than my uncle_, she says, ambiguous enough to force his heart to speed up.

If he can die, tomorrow might be the day it happens, so he decides he wants the truth. Before he can ask for it, though, she is slipping away, this time with the coyness of a patented cheerleader's smile; its message is explicit: _don't ask, because neither of us should know the answer_.

-

The moment he asks her to shoot him, demands it of her, begs it from her, she is crying and begging right back.

_Save the cheerleader; save the world. _

He cannot rescue her. He can't rescue anyone.

And it is about to destroy them both.

-

In the end Nathan swoops in – literally – and saves the day. Peter is flying high in the sky, nearing radioactive explosion and thinking about the way she dropped to her knees in a pool of his blood and the wonderment of _we're the same_ in her eyes.

And Claire is the one left on the ground with the father who wasn't hers but wanted to be and a gun at her feet and several very special people, wondering how something so _right_ can possibly feel so _wrong_.

-

…_save the world_.

-

The night before he explodes and puts the world in peril, Peter dreams of Claire. She looks older but she still has the same dimpled smile and the same wavy hair; her smile is breathless and her hair is mussed and she is standing backed up against what appears to be the side of a building he doesn't recognize. Her body is arched outwards, colliding with his, hands slipping in between them and fingers dancing along his belt buckle. His face is buried in her neck and he can hear her smile, recognizes it in the single word she speaks he cautiously kisses her skin.

_Wrong_, she says, and then her lips are on his and her hand is resting against the back of his neck and he topples into her, close as can be, the two of them pressed up to the wall and _oh, how has he ever lived without this? _It is anxiety and need and grief that flares up and morphs into sweet, temporary bliss.

He wakes up sweaty and stressed and _wrong_.

-

As he and Nathan soar upward, he remembers that his dreams always come true.

He is there, and Claire is there; _they_ are there and it isn't right, it absolutely isn't, and yet after it all it somehow felt like the wonderment he saw in her eyes the first time they met, but it can only be _wrong_ –

Higher and higher and he feeling an overwhelming sensation of _rightness_, because his dreams come true, and if he and Claire are there, if he and Claire are together…

Then he _must_ have done it. He _will_ do it.

-

_Save the cheerleader; save the world_.

-

Above all, it is _right_.


End file.
